Image data is encoded using a codec according to a predetermined data compression standard, for example, the moving picture expert group (MPEG) standard, and then is stored in a recording medium or transmitted through a communication channel in the form of a bitstream.
With the development and supply of hardware capable of reproducing and storing high resolution or high definition image content, a necessity for a codec that effectively encodes or decodes the high resolution or high definition image content is increasing. Encoded image content may be reproduced by being decoded. Recently, methods of effectively compressing such high resolution or high definition image content have been executed. For example, a method of efficiently compressing an image is performed by processing an image to be encoded via an arbitrary method.
Video codec reduces the amount of data by using a prediction technique that uses a characteristic that video images have high correlation with each other temporally or spatially. According to the prediction technique, in order to predict a current image using adjacent images, image information is recorded using a temporal distance or a spatial distance between the images and a prediction error.